PUNCH
 | |
| ticker | PUNCH (パンチ) |
|---|---|
| blockchain | Solana |
| launched | early February 2026 |
| peak market cap | about 27.6 million dollars (February 20, 2026) |
| based on | Punch the Japanese macaque of Ichikawa City Zoo |
PUNCH is a Solana meme coin based on Punch, the abandoned baby macaque at Japan's Ichikawa City Zoo who went viral clinging to an IKEA plushie, and one of the few animal coins whose story fed back into real donations for the animal.
PUNCH, registered on chain under the Japanese name パンチ, is a meme coin on Solana launched through pump.fun in early February 2026 around Punch, a baby Japanese macaque at Ichikawa City Zoo in Chiba Prefecture. It stands with Moo Deng and Peanut the Squirrel in the lineage of coins built on genuinely viral real animals, and it is unusual in that the attention around it coincided with substantial real money reaching the animal.
The monkey
Punch was born at the zoo in July 2025 and was rejected by his mother shortly after birth. Keepers hand raised him and gave him an IKEA DJUNGELSKOG stuffed orangutan as a surrogate mother. Footage of the tiny macaque dragging the plushie around his enclosure exploded in February 2026, with the most shared clips passing 40 million views in that month alone, and coverage followed from the Japan Times, CNN, the New York Times and the BBC. The president of IKEA Japan visited the zoo in February 2026 to donate fresh plushies. By summer 2026 the arc had a happy ending, with Punch integrating into the troop and playing alongside a companion named Momo chan.
The coin
The token launched on pump.fun as the story went viral, and DexScreener dates its PumpSwap pool to February 5, 2026. Coverage from 99Bitcoins and Yahoo Finance described a rise of roughly 80,000 percent from its launch lows. The peak came on February 20, 2026, when Justin Sun and the exchange HTX pledged 100,000 dollars to Ichikawa City Zoo and named Punch an HTX brand ambassador; the coin jumped about 194 percent in a day to a market capitalization near 27.6 million dollars on more than 43 million dollars of volume. The project, run from the account @Punch_on_sol, states that a portion of community proceeds supports the zoo and says it obtained verbal authorization from zoo administration to use Punch's imagery, a claim that rests on the project's own statements.
Monkey Mountain
The zoo opened an official donation drive for Punch in mid March 2026, and by early June it had raised about 43 million yen, with the deadline extended to December 31. The funds are earmarked for improvements to Monkey Mountain, the enclosure where Punch and the other macaques live, including an expanded enclosure, sunshades and air conditioning.
Current status
As of mid August 2026 PUNCH trades at a market capitalization around 645,000 dollars per DexScreener, far below its February peak but still liquid, with the community accounts active as Punch himself outgrows the plushie era that made him famous.
References
- https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/02/24/japan/punch-monkey-viral/
- https://finance.yahoo.com/news/justin-sun-donates-100k-viral-121018022.html
- https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/news/still-thinking-of-punch-the-monkey-ichikawa-zoo-just-extended-its-donation-deadline-for-him-060426
- https://thetab.com/2026/03/18/japan-zoo-opens-official-donations-for-punch-the-monkey-and-heres-how-to-donate
- https://punchonsolana.live/sanctuary
- https://www.tbsnews.net/offbeat/plushie-partner-punch-macaque-finds-love-momo-chan-ichikawa-zoo-1390896
- PWEASE PWEASE is a Solana meme coin based on the babyface JD Vance meme from the February 2025 Ov
- QUANT Gen Z Quant (QUANT) is a pump.fun meme coin that a 13 year old launched and dumped on live
- retardio retardio is a Solana meme coin and NFT ecosystem from 2024 whose name became one of the mo
- Sad Hamster Sad Hamster is a Solana meme coin based on the pouting hamster TikTok meme with billions o
- SafeMoon SafeMoon was a BNB Chain reflection token launched in March 2021 that reached a market cap